Requiem for a Backbone

Now that Camp Runamuck has firmly established itself on one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, let's see what the Republican majorities in the Congress are up to these days. One thing they're not doing is anything substantial that will rein in the free-range crazy in the Executive Branch. They're rubber-stamping the evil, the unqualified, and Betsy DeVos, who is both, to run the various departments. The sub-Cabinet appointments look to be even worse.

A guy was appointed Ambassador to Austria because he liked The Sound of Music, and I guarantee you his appointment will sail through on a rousing chorus of "So Long, Farewell," the worst song in the history of musical theater. They are preparing to confirm a guy who's presently suing the EPA to be its administrator, and to hand the Department of Energy (and responsibility for the nation's nukes) over to Rick Perry, which is a joke that writes itself.

You have to feel just a little bit sorry for them. Here they are, with all their wishes fulfilled. A Republican president, solid majorities in both Houses, one justice away from a Supreme Court of their dreams, and a Democratic Party incapable of mounting any more than token opposition to any of it. It's all right there, inches from their fingertips, and they have Toonces the Driving Cat in the Oval Office, picking fights with department stores and up to his neck in an whirlpool of allegations that his administration is the Kremlin's socket-wrench.

So, we get a preposterous press conference from the House Republican leadership on Tuesday morning about their eternally amorphous plan to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act. Quite naturally, the departure of Michael Flynn hijacked the proceedings, and Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, did a half-gainer into a wading pool of flopsweat. From The Hill:

"I'm not going to prejudge the circumstances surrounding this. I think the administration will explain the circumstances that led to this," Ryan said. "The intelligence community has been looking into this thing all along, by the way, just the involvement with respect to Russia. "I think it's really important to realize that as soon as they were being misled by the national security adviser, they asked for his resignation."

This, of course, has nothing to do with the chaos down the street, or with the fact that Republican congresscritters have been getting run out of their own town meetings back home. It also has nothing to do with the fact that Ryan has a rebellion on his hands by members of the House Freedom Caucus, who won't agree to any repeal and/or replace unless it contains the gratuitous cruelty of eliminating the Medicaid expansion money.

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Luckily, of course, there is the House Oversight Committee, which certainly will get to the bottom of this whole Michael Flynn business because, Hell, if they were willing to spend eleventy-gazillion dollars investigating Hillary Rodham Clinton, certainly they can't wait to get their teeth into a genuine national-security scandal, right?

Enter Jason Chaffetz, the least excusable man in the federal government. From The Hill:

"It really is the purview of the Intel Committee. They really are the only ones that can look at that type of information, particularly when you're talking about interactions with a nation-state like that. It's not something the Oversight Committee can actually look at because sources and methods are the exclusive purview of the Intel Committee," Chaffetz said. But House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) indicated Tuesday that he doesn't plan to launch a separate investigation of Flynn. Nunes cited executive privilege, according to CNN.

And 'round and 'round we go. I'm old enough to remember when legislators of both parties used to laugh at executive privilege arguments emanating from the Executive. Now, they get used as part of a circular alibi for nobody's doing the job of oversight.

And, finally, with everything exploding all the way to the horizon, they're probably going to confirm Andrew Puzder to be Secretary of Labor, despite the fact that he ran whatever it is that the restaurant game has for sweatshops. (Grillshops? Greasetrapshops?) We have the now-customary nominee-in-trouble stories cropping up—Jesus, even Oprah's involved in this one—but it still takes four Republican senators to sink the nomination, and it's hard to see who they might be. Cowardice and neglect are very old dancing partners, but they still step lively.

Charles P. PierceCharles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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